


The Record

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Calm Before The Storm, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Foreshadowing, Friendship, Humour, Metafiction, Music, Romance, Silly songs, Some angst, laughing, some suggestiveness, spoilers for Doctor Who Series 9, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 01:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15595275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: When the Doctor hears the sound of Clara laughing deep inside the TARDIS, he can't help but investigate. When he discovers what she finds so funny, it leaves him a little bit red-faced. So of course he blames the UNIT Christmas Party.





	The Record

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly fluff, this one, inspired by a chance find on YouTube (all will be explained in the end note). 
> 
> Time placement for this story is post-Zygon Incursion, possibly even post-Sleep No More.

The Doctor could hear the laughter all the way through the TARDIS. It echoed through the corridors, a veritable cacophony of mirth. 

It was a sweet, ringing, joyful, giggly sound—one he, to be honest, hadn’t heard in the TARDIS in a while. He knew who was laughing, of course. His favourite human; possibly his favourite human of all time. And he knew Clara had had a rough go of it in recent months. Losing Danny Pink had been tough on her, tougher than she’d let on. And occasionally it would get to her.

Still, there had been moments of joy between the Doctor and Clara Oswald since fate (and Santa Claus … it’s a long story) brought them back together again. And, at times, the Doctor allowed himself the fantasy of thinking that, just maybe, Clara would someday look at him the way she did Danny … the way she did an earlier, long-dead Doctor who loved bow-ties and fezzes. He’d long since given up hope on that, at least not for this regeneration. The tender hugging that he had come to treasure, her stated desire to hold hands, her coming to live with him on her holidays … he’d resigned himself to the fact this was friendship, nothing more. Maybe the next time around he’d look like Sandshoes again, closer to Clara’s age. 

Clara’s laughter rang out again. His curiosity fully piqued now, the Doctor knew he had to find her to satisfy it. What in Rassilon was she finding so damn funny?

The trick was trying to find her, of course. The acoustics within the TARDIS were tricky; it wasn’t uncommon to hear sounds coming from deep within the ship’s near-infinite corridors. The Doctor had heard music, laughter and, one (very very _very_ long) night, Amy and Rory, uh … we’ll just stop there. You get the picture.

The Doctor considered using the TARDIS’ internal sensors to locate Clara, but she didn’t sound like she was in any danger, so where would the fun be in that? So he decided to check the usual places where Clara liked to hang out during her holidays from teaching. 

The Doctor loved the fact she chose to spend them with him. And it wasn’t always about chasing space monsters. Sometimes they’d just sit quietly together, reading; him with his stack of _Beanos_ and _Dandys_ and her with his copies of unpublished works by Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Just comfortable in each other’s company. 

Other times, she’d go off and explore on her own. The Doctor trusted her implicitly, of course, so she had free reign of the TARDIS. All he did was warn her not to push any big red buttons she came across. Of course, she ignored that request the first time out and stomped back into the console room drenched to the skin after having activated an emergency shower. He called her Grumpy Cat for a while after that. Clara promised never to push any more big red buttons in the TARDIS—if for no other reason than to extort a promise from the Doctor that he’d never call her Grumpy Cat again.

One by one, the Doctor eliminated Clara’s favourite locations as he searched for her. The library. The boot cupboard that was an exact replica of the interior of Westminster Abbey. The wildlife preserve. The lake of strawberries. Romana’s closet.

The Doctor really didn’t want to disturb Clara. She sounded like she was having such a wonderful time. But, if he didn’t find her soon, he knew he’d have to resort to paging her over the TARDIS tannoy. 

Finally, he found her in a room that hadn’t been on his list: the music room. As soon as he entered the room, he realized what Clara had been doing to make her not only break into peals of sustained laughter, but make her roll around on the floor, clutching her middle.

“Oh, no!” the Doctor said as he recognized his own voice coming from the ultra-high-fidelity speakers attached to the state-of-the-art laser turntable that was on top of a plinth in the middle of the room.

Well, not _his_ voice, exactly. The voice of one of his earlier selves. But still his voice. Sort of. 

And the voice was singing a comically exaggerated version of _Three Little Fishes in the Itty Bitty Pool_.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” said Clara.

“Clara, why are you rolling around on the floor like that? It’s undignified,” the Doctor said, adopting the tone of a stern schoolteacher.

Which was totally useless against a schoolteacher who was laughing so hard, she eventually had to sit up and cough.

“That _(cough)_ is the funniest, most insane _(cough)_ thing I have ever heard!” Clara said, pointing at the turntable. “And you recorded an entire album of it!”

“I was young then,” the Doctor said with a shrug as he went to shut the turntable off.

“And evidently bonkers.”

“It was back when I was working for UNIT in the sixties, seventies or eighties, and, well, I…”

“Lost a bet?”

“No … yes … though it was more due to the, ah…”

The two time travellers’ eyes met and they said, in unison, “UNIT Christmas party!”

Clara nearly broke into another laughing fit. “You know, Doctor, those events are really the gifts that keeps on giving.”

“You’re the one to talk about singing, Clara, I seem to recall you made a bit of a spectacle of yourself at the last party we went to.”

“I thought I was in key during the karaoke. Nobody said anything to me, anyway. And didn’t you like the song I chose, _If I Could Turn Back Time_? And it was _your_ idea for the two of us to try and do _I Got You Babe_ , forcing us to spend the rest of the night having to convince Kate and Osgood that we weren’t both as drunk as a glass of water.”

“Let us not speak of that again,” the Doctor growled as he picked up the sleeve for the record. “How did you even find this place? And how did you know this was me? It’s not as if I put my name on it. I didn’t even use ‘John Smith,’ see? Changed the spelling on my name and everything, see? And I wasn’t the only one who got roped into doing this after the party. I think Jessie Matthews was a cover name for Jo Grant…”

“Your photo’s on the back. Remember, I’ve met all of you.”

“Fair point.”

“Anyway, to answer your first question, I got a little mopey and you were too busy doing whatever you were doing, so I went exploring and found this place,” Clara said as she got up off the floor, wiping her eyes from the laughing. “I was hoping maybe you had some rare Bowie or Kate Bush or something. I asked the TARDIS to play me some music, and suddenly that was spinning on the turntable.”

The Doctor glared at the ceiling. “You trying to embarrass me?” he muttered to it. 

“Sorry?”

“Never mind. So, was I really that awful?” he looked downcast.

“What?”

“You were laughing. Really laughing. Even when I tell you a joke, you never laugh like that.”

“That’s because you’re not very funny,” Clara deadpanned.

“Ha, ha. You know what I mean, Clara.”

She hugged the Doctor with one arm and took the vinyl album cover from him with her free hand. “You don’t mean to tell me that you were being serious with _Three Little Fishes in the Itty Bitty Pool_? I mean, it’s insane, yes, but it’s meant to be fun, and for kids, too! Look, read the title: _Children’s Favourites_. And see that hand puppet on the cover? We both know that’s yours. This was meant to be _fun_. Or do I have to strap you down and listen to your epic reading of _Froggy Went a-Courtin’_ to convince you of that fact?” She gave him a squeeze and let go, proceeding to put the record back into the sleeve.

The Doctor smiled. “I remember the day I recorded that one. I also tried a version in a Dalek voice, but the Brigadier vetoed it.”

Clara began to laugh as she intoned in a robotic Dalek monotone: “FROGGY-WENT-A-COURTING AND HE DID EX-TER-MIN-ATE! I can see why!” She laughed even harder and, finally, the Doctor couldn’t hold back his own laughter anymore.

Sniffing, Clara asked, “So, when you are going to make another record?”

“Another record?”

“Sure. I mean, I’ve heard you play that guitar of yours and you’re incredible. _Amazing Grace_ , _Beethoven’s 5th_ , and that really nice little romantic ballad you’ve been practicing when you think you’re alone.”

“How did you know about…”

Clara put her finger on the side of her nose, conspiratorially. “I know things.”

“It’s not ready yet. A work in progress. I don’t have the melody right. It doesn’t feel like … I just need inspiration.”

Clara found herself standing a little closer to the Doctor than she intended. Purely accidental. “Can I help?”

The Doctor blushed and took a step back, hesitantly. “Oh, uh, er, it’ll come to me. Eventually. As they say, it’s the journey, not the destination, right?”

Clara smiled. “OK, but you’re still not getting out of your obligation to wipe this album of earworms from my mind with something new. Look what I found!” She headed off to a crate that was haphazardly left on a table in a corner. She lifted out what looked to be another turntable, but this one had microphones attached.

“My granddad used to have one of these. Back in the days before tapes or digital recorders, people could make their own honest-to-god records,” Clara said as she put it down next to the crate. “And …” She went to another box that was full of vinyl—a Johnny Mathis record was at the top of the pile—and pulled out several featureless discs. “You, my friend, still have some blanks!”

“It’ll sound awful. That thing dates back to the Forties,” the Doctor protested.

“That’s half the charm, isn’t it?”

“But, Clara, I can’t sing. I’m even worse than I was back in the UNIT days.”

Clara rolled her eyes. “You’re too down on yourself, Doctor. I’ve heard you sing in the shower. You have a lovely singing voice.”

“I don’t know, I… wait a second. Back up. When have you ever heard me singing in the shower?” The Doctor raised his formidable eyebrows.

Clara stammered a moment. “Uh, er, when you had to stay the night that time the TARDIS kicked you out because you’d spilled Tizer on the console and she had to do a deep clean? I might have … accidentally, you understand … looked in when you were taking a shower. Just for a second. Had to grab a hairbrush, yeah. Just long enough to hear you singing _Space Oddity_. Just for a second.”

“Accidentally.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“Nope. So do you think this still works?”

The Doctor gave the recorder a cursory glance. “Needle’s still there. I don’t think the wiring is shot or anything.” He put his sonic specs on and they buzzed as he gave it another look. He took them off a few moments later. “Should be in fine working order.”

“No excuses, then. You and I are going to make a record.”

“Oh, really. What do you have in mind?”

Clara tapped her finger against her lips, in consideration. “ _I’ve Had the Time of My Life_ , maybe?”

“Too Eighties for my taste. How about _The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face_?” 

Clara grimaced. “Which face? Nah, too in-jokey. Maybe we should stay away from time-related stuff. Sort of feels like we’re grabbing at the low-hanging fruit.”

“OK, how about _She Was Waitin’ for Her Mother at the Station in Torino and You Know I Love You but it’s Getting Too Heavy to Laugh_?”

Clara gave him a skeptical look. “You just made that one up.”

Without a word, the Doctor went to the box of vinyl, flipped to the halfway point, and pulled out the album _Second Contribution_ by Shawn Phillips and showed it triumphantly to Clara.

The label had kindly shortened the title down to an acronym: _SWWFHMATSITAYKILYBBIGTH_.

“Doubles as an eye chart,” the Doctor said. “If you can read it, you don’t need glasses. If you can pronounce it, you’re Zygon.”

Clara slapped his arm playfully. “We are _not_ going to be recording…” she looked at the label intently, “… _Swwfhmatsitaykilybbigth_.”

“Good god. Your tongue OK?”

“Well, you can take the Zygon out of the girl…” she said with a sly smile. “Plus, I spent a summer working in a tourist office in Wales. That one’s easy compared to some of the place names I had to learn. Anyway, There must be some song we can do that doesn’t require us to change our football team allegiances or swear fealty to a wannabe alien overlord with impeccable taste in body-snatching.”

The Doctor considered. “We could do one of the songs I wrote years ago.”

“You wrote songs with lyrics?”

“Yup. In fact, I think they’re still lying around here somewhere…” He pulled out a box from under a table and rummaged through it. “So _that’s_ where I left Benton’s blackmail photos,” he muttered to himself as he came across a packet of images. Moving on after stuffing that into a pocket, he found two pieces of handwritten sheet music. “Granted, we might have to update them a little.”

“Them?”

“No use recording a single that only has one side, is there?” He handed her the sheets. “What do you think?”

Clara looked at the first one. The Doctor looked over her shoulder as she read.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “That was when I was test-driving aliases. That one stuck around long enough for the WOTAN supercomputer to think it was my real name. You might remember I tried bringing it back when I had the bow tie, but you just thought I was a nutter in a monk’s habit when I did, so I dropped it. Missy still calls me that sometimes to bug me.”

Clara recited the lyrics: “ _He’s been to the past and future, and whatever he may do, he’ll always be a friend of mine. Who? Dr. Who!_ ” She started to laugh. “Oh, Doctor, this is adorable!”

“The other one is a bit more existential.”

Clara read from the second sheet: “ _As fingers move to end mankind, metallic teeth begin to grind, with sword of truth I turn to fight_ … Wow, Doctor, were you setting out to create your own superhero theme song or what?”

“You don’t like that one?”

“I love this one! I love them both. OK, so here’s what we’ll do. I’ll sing … what did you call it? … _Who’s Who_ … for the A-side and you can record … _I Am the Doctor_ for the flipsi-”

“Hey, why do I end up on the flipside?”

“Shush, now. Go get your guitar so you can teach me the melodies. We have a recording session to do.”

“Yes, boss.”

***

A few minutes later, if you were to have been sitting in the console room of the TARDIS, you would have heard the sound of music coming down the corridors. Then laughter. Then more music. This continued for a couple of hours until, eventually … silence. 

You might have thought you were all alone in the ship. But, of course, you wouldn’t have been.

The TARDIS would be there. And she knows everything that goes on within her rooms and remote corners. 

Clara—or The One with the Eyes, as the TARDIS tended to call her in lieu of trying to keep track of all of Clara’s identities over the millennia—had seemed sad, and, if there was one thing the TARDIS could not stand anymore, it was sadness, so she had manipulated her internal layout to guide The One with the Eyes to the music room when the young human had gone exploring. And, when she asked to hear some music, the TARDIS had intentionally chosen a ridiculous recording Her Thief had made back when the Time Lords had prevented him from piloting her. And it had done the trick. It made The One with the Eyes laugh. _Really_ laugh, to the extent the TARDIS briefly thought she had made a grievous error.

And it had made Her Thief curious, and so he sought out The One with the Eyes.

Before long, the two were laughing and making music together. And then … the TARDIS had seen this happen before. Sometimes with Her Thief, but occasionally with others such as the Pretty One and the one with the long bipedal appendages and red hair. An intense look between two humanoids, the reduction of physical distance between their faces, the musical instrument being placed gently on the floor. Well, that last was unique to this situation, at any rate.

The TARDIS knows everything that goes on within her rooms and remote corners. But that doesn’t mean she has to _see_ all. And so she left Her Thief and The One with the Eyes alone and unobserved to do whatever it is humanoids do when the physical distance between their faces is reduced, and she focused her primary consciousness on the console as she scanned the Vortex. 

It didn’t take long for the TARDIS to work out where Her Thief and, yes, The One with the Eyes, would be needed next. And the time after that, as well. And the time after th-

The TARDIS stopped as she took in the information on the last reading. And, although emotions as felt by humanoids were denied her, she was fully aware of how certain events would devastate Her Thief. She had seen it before when he’d lost Pretty One and the one called Amy. And before that when he’d lost The One with the Yellow Hair (though at least she was still alive). And it was going to happen again, soon. And this time … it was going to be worse for Her Thief. Because The One with the Eyes meant so much to him, and she would not be as lucky as The One with the Yellow Hair.

The TARDIS looked momentarily in on Her Thief and The One with the Eyes in the music room. They still held their faces close together, and now the physical space between the rest of their bodies had also been reduced. And the TARDIS noticed that neither of them were in a vertical orientation anymore. A quick scan revealed increased heart rate, breathing and … enough other data for the TARDIS to determine that neither was in any physical danger. So she gave them their privacy again.

She looked again at her scans of where Her Thief was needed next. Calculations were made and probabilities were determined. 

The first set of co-ordinates was deleted. And she did the same for the co-ordinates after that.

There was nothing she could do to prevent the inevitable. There was a block that prevented her from looking too far ahead, but she knew it would become a fixed point in time of the highest degree. But, at least, she could maximize the time Her Thief and The One with the Eyes had to put their faces together and to laugh before they got to that point. She began to replace the co-ordinates with that of worlds of song and planets of gardens. There would be no more unplanned detours for now.

The silence was broken as laughter again sounded through the corridors. This time, it was Her Thief’s laugh. A sound the TARDIS hadn’t genuinely heard for a long time. Then she heard The One with the Eyes also laughing, her sadness from earlier no longer evident in her voice.

And that’s why the TARDIS had absolutely no regrets about suspending her own prime directive. Her Thief was needed by a lot of people, worlds, and even entire civilizations.

But they could wait. Right now, Her Thief and The One with the Eyes were needed. By each other. 

It didn’t take a millennia-old, sentient time machine to do the math.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by me finding a recording of Jon Pertwee singing "Three Little Fishes" . It was hilarious and just as insane as Clara describes. As is his "Froggy Went a-Courtin'" from the same record. The record was an album called Children's Favourites which featured Pertwee and several other singers. In this story I pretend they were all UNIT personnel. Jessie Matthews happens to sound a bit like Katy Manning, so I made her to be Jo Grant in disguise! You can see the record for itself (and the hand puppet) here: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Childrens-Favourites/release/642259
> 
> All of the other songs mentioned here are real -- including the one with the big acronym. I wasn't planning to make a reference to Welsh place names until I had my Microsoft Word read the acronym to me during proofreading and it sounded exactly like the name of a Welsh town.
> 
> Because videos come and go, and because it might be against a rule, I'm not going to put links here to the songs. The reader can investigate further if they wish.
> 
> "Who's Who" was recorded by Roberta Tovey, who played Susan in the 1960s Peter Cushing Dr. Who movies. "I Am the Doctor" was a version of the Doctor Who Theme with spoken lyrics that was recorded by Jon Pertwee in the early 1970s. I quote a few words from each song with full respect to the original songwriters.
> 
> Having Twelve read comic books while Clara reads high-end literature is also a shoutout to the Cushing films where such a scene occurs.
> 
> WOTAN was the computer-villain of the 1966 story The War Machines. My reference to it comes from the infamous moment where the computer becomes the first character to directly refer to the Doctor by the name "Doctor Who", and the last until Missy buried the taboo in Series 10 (I won't count sneaky things like Bessie's licence plate being WHO 1, or the Second Doctor once calling himself Doktor von Wer). In Series 7, the Eleventh Doctor stated that he liked it when people asked the question "Doctor who?" but never really attempted to use it as a name.
> 
> Anyone who has listened to Jenna Coleman's convention panels knows exactly where the emergency shower gag comes from. EDIT: Apparently not as a few people have asked me. So, in a nutshell, during the filming of a Series 8 episode (possibly Time Heist) they were shooting in a power station. In-between scenes, Peter Capaldi went looking for the craft services table for a snack and somehow pushed a button that activated an emergency shower and drenched himself! Peter claims it was a push-bar on a door, while Jenna is adamant it was a big button Peter pressed out of curiosity!
> 
> The boot cupboard-as-Westminster Abbey joke refers to sight gag Tom Baker always wanted to do during his time as the Fourth Doctor.
> 
> The eye chart gag is borrowed from a famous comedy sketch by the Canadian duo Wayne & Shuster called "Rinse the Blood off My Toga".
> 
> The final "act" of this story is a return to the format I have used before with the story The One with the Eyes, among others. "Pretty One" is the name the TARDIS gives Rory in The Doctor's Wife.


End file.
